1. Do not compete on price.You cannot do it and make your margins. Instead add value by adding benefits and building relationships with your customers.

2. Be 100% Customer Centered: Do not add to the customer’s problems, needs and wants by having anything but the greatest service, greatest positive attitude toward servicing the customer, and the greatest ability to solve the customer’s problems, needs and wants. Everything you say and do, must be about and for the customer, not about you or the business.

When the customer has a problem with your products, services, the company or you, you must solve that problem immediately. It is the difference between keeping the customer or sending them to the Vultures.

3. Be the Expert in your market: Be the place that customers think of first for answers about products, service, etc. Salespeople must know everything about the products they sell in order to sell benefits. Being an expert includes looking like an expert, acting like an expert and knowing how and why a product benefits the customer.

4. Legendary Service: Good service is no longer good enough. Great service is no longer good enough. You must give Legendary Service: Service that is so good customers and prospects buy from you because of your service not your products. And they tell everyone about you without you asking them to do so.

Although the Vultures service their customers, you can still “out-service” them on their best days. Fast, effective, polite, 100% Customer-Centered knowledgeable people will impress even the toughest customer. Apply all 100% Customer-Centered attitudes to every service opportunity. When a customer calls for service use your voice, your attitude and your actions to show them that their need is the most important thing to you at that time.

5. Get help: You are not alone fighting off the Vultures. Join trade associations. If you belong to a trade association become very active in it. Build relationships with non-competitive business in your industry. Sales Professionals love to help other Sales Professionals. I know every time I do I learn or remember things that help me increase my sales and profits.

6. Aggressively use the telephone: I consider my telephone a cash register. Because every time I call a prospect (a person who has not yet had the greatest buying experience of their life, the experience I will give to them) or a customer (a person who is doing business with me at the present time or has done business with me before), I know it is a great opportunity to ring up a sale. Don’t be afraid to cold call prospects. The worst thing they can do is hang up on you. Consider the time you spend contacting customers as an investment in your present and future income.

7. Survey your customers: Find out why your customers are doing business with you. Question them as to what they like and dislike about your operation. Ask prospects why they are not doing business with you. Then use the answers to plan your attack on the market.

8. Stay in contact with your customers: If they bought from you once, they will buy from you over and over again and send their friends and family to you when you ask them to. You can contact your customers as often as you like as long as you tell them or give them something of value.

9. Sell your store benefits: You sell the same products as your competition. Maybe even the same brands. To tilt the playing field, in a big way, sell your BENEFITS. Not just your features - the service. Sell the BENEFITS - what the customer gets from the service.

10. Ask for the sale: From my observations of sales people over 45 years I estimate that 90% of people in the selling business do not ask for the sale. They show and talk about their products and services. Many sell their store benefits. But they do not ask for the sale. The only sales they make are when the customer closes themselves. That happens, but not often enough to be a top sales producer.

Ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky when asked why he shoots the puck all the time but does not score each time, replied, “I miss 100% of the ones I don’t shoot.” You will not always make the sale when you ask for it. But it is for sure you will make more sales than if you don’t ask.

Don’t be road kill for the Vultures to eat you. Be aggressive! Use these 10 Aggressive Actions to be a Successful Sales Professional!

Bob Janet - Sales consultant/trainer, speaker, author of “Join The Profit Club” combines 40 plus years as owner/operator of professional, retail, manufacturing and service businesses with his unique teaching and storytelling ability to motivate, educate and inspire business professionals of all levels and all industries for increased sales & profits. Contact Bob at 704-882-6100, or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..